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For those interested in analyzing senseless exclusions, suspensions and expulsions, you might find this link interesting. It captures the stories of individual students. The saddest to me were a low income student sent home for violating the dress code and truant girl sent to jail. A five-year-old low income student in Mississippi was sent home in a police car because he didn't have on black shoes. According to the story, his parents could not afford to buy him new shoes and, instead, had used a magic marker to make his red and white shoes black. In Texas an 11th grader was placed in jail for 24 hours and charged with a misdemeanor for truancy. As I understand it, this punishment is not aberrational in Texas. But the reason behind her crime reveals its absurdity. She exceeded the permissible absences because she was holding down two jobs to support her two siblings. In an exercise of wisdom and judgment that the state and schools seem to lack too often, the court dismissed the charges against her.